IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”
If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.
What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”
Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States.
But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe.
Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged.
Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot.
It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.
The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote.
“The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.”
That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism.
Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own.
But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity.
It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be?
Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear.
“The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.”
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”
If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.
What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”
Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States.
But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe.
Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged.
Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot.
It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.
The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote.
“The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.”
That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism.
Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own.
But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity.
It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be?
Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear.
“The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.”
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